BIRT Report Designer is a graphical report design tool. BIRT Report Designer uses the design engine to generate a report design file based on the report object model (ROM). ROM supports the standard set of BIRT report items and custom report items. BIRT Report Designer also supports the reuse of a report design by saving it as a template. You can also save individual report components in a component library, making those components accessible to other report designs.

The primary functional differences between the BIRT RCP Report Designer and BIRT Report Designer are:

Other than these differences, the functionality of the two report designers is identical and all further mentions of BIRT Report Designer in this chapter apply equally to BIRT RCP Report Designer.